Description: This paper attempts to broaden the actuary's understanding of decrement rate estimation and to clear up some of the more common misconceptions which have been promoted.

Description: Sooner or later a casualty actuary is confronted by the question, Given a history of paid loss amounts by calendar year, what should reserves be? Often, it is not possible to accurately gather and analyze additional data within the time constraints for the reserving decision. The algebraic reserving method presented in this paper offers one approach to rapidly addressing this problem. The paper consists of four sections - General Considerations, Formulas, Examples, and Conclusion.

Description: This paper suggests a possible flexible solution to the time and resource problems of running a large number of stochastic interest rate scenarios, by selecting a representative subset. Each interest rate scenario consists of 30 future spot yield curves, where a reasonable number of points are specified on each curve such as 12. The distribution of the scenarios is approximated by the subset and each scenario in the subset has equal weight. The method is independent of the interest rate generator used.

Description: Users of statistical packages should be more aware of the influence that outlying data points can have on their statistical analyses. Robust procedures provide formal methods to spot these outliers and reduce their influence. While a few robust procedures are mentioned in this article, one is emphasized and it is motivated by maximum likelihood estimation to make it seem more natural. In this article, the author will try to provide some background, beginning with maximum likelihood estimation of one parameter, that will hopefully make robust estimation seem natural and rather easy.

Description: This paper develops a method for estimating the future claim costs of known ongoing large medical claims. It applies Least Squares analysis of historical experience to derive two arrays of factors. One array is to be applied as a vector inner product with claim costs already incurred and/or paid to project a total future claim cost. The second array distributes the total future claim cost over the months following the analysis date.

Description: Sooner or later a casualty actuary is confronted by the question, Given a history of paid loss amounts by calendar year, what should reserves be? Often, it is not possible to accurately gather and analyze additional data within the time constraints for the reserving decision. The algebraic reserving method presented in this paper offers one approach to rapidly addressing this problem.